TURKISH PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC FROM THE SEVENTIES REDISCOVERED (2017): Gonna take you wider

Graham Reid | Mar 20, 2017 | 5 min read

Bu Ellerden Gocup. by Asik Emrah

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The wheel of history is turning faster
and faster.

Once, you could understand how Greece,
which gave the world the important building blocks of democracy and philosophy, was
labouring under the gun of a military dictatorship in the 20th century.

Or how Rome, which once commanded a massive
empire, had descended into the political chaos which is modern day
Italy with its revolving door governments.

These – and the decline of great Indus
and South American civilisations – were explicable because centuries
had passed between the Great Days and the Appalling Now.

But today, making America “great
again” seems to mean returning to the racially divided, McCarthy
era of the Fifties.

And Jeez . . . that wasn't so long ago, even in
these amnesiac times.

And Turkey, once the centre of a great
empire itself is right now devolving into . . . ?

Well, who knows?

The Turks certainly don't, but the
future doesn't look bright.

It's hard to believe when you look at the
riots, military presence and increasingly oppressive regime in that
divided nation that Turkey once had innovative psychedelic music, a music which
celebrated freedom.

Yet they did . . . and, ironically, it
happened during a decade from the mid Seventies when there was a
military coup in '80, right in the centre of that period.

And in a further irony the music
collected on the compilation Uzelli Psychedelic Anadolu came, not out
of Istanbul but a shop in Frankfurt which catered to migrant workers
from Turkey.

The Uzelli brothers who owned the store
also sold cassettes back then and gradually Uzelli became a label.

And a very big one too.

Uzelli claims a catalogue of more than
13000 albums which are currently being given digital reissue (624 at
last count). But our interest centres on this psychedelic collection
of 10 tracks – available in digital, vinyl and CD formats – in an
evocative cover.

As we've noted previously when
considering collections of “psychedelic” music from various parts
of the globe, the definition can be very flexible and the music often
a very long way from the heyday of Western psyche-rock in the late
Sixties when the word came into the common language.

But as Nathan Ford of the
Wellington-based Active Listener quite rightly observed when we spoke
to him about his psychedelic compilations, he considered it to be
“music that is exploratory in nature . . . it is done from a
psychedelic mindset . . . it's an approach to making the music”.

So let's take that idea of an
“approach” as the key part of our working definition for the
Uzelli collection, and it fits.

By using electric versions of
traditional instruments – just as young Indians did with electric
sitar in the Seventies – alongside rock guitars, synths and
thumping rhythm sections, there is an undeniable psychedelic feel at
work. And not a little funk-rock either.

These were, of course, very radical
sounds in their time but remain so today as the artists reconfigure
traditional folk into the mindset of the era, or get highly inventive
and somewhat off the radar.

When the wah-wah infused solo on the very
groovy Asik Emrah's Bu Ellerden Gocup takes centre-stage you can't
hear it as coming from anywhere other than “out there”.

The yearning of the singer Elvan Sevil
on Yar Senin Icin speaks to us in a not dissimilar way to Grace Slick
at her most personal, and across the same span of time.

According to what Elsewhere has read by
way of publicity, “The tracks on Psychedelic Anadolu . . . .
represent a unique combination of personalities and characters, from
giants of the Turkish psychedelic scene like Erkin Koray and Ünol
Büyükgönenç of Kardaşlar, to unknown and undiscovered Kerem
Güney; the ephemeral band Zor Beyler with Ayzer Danga from Mavi
Işıklar and Moğollar on drums; Ali Ayhan from Urfa with his
unquestionably unique voice from the folk scene; and Akbaba, the
extreme wedding duo”.

And frankly if Akbaba Ikilisi were
providing music at a wedding you would definitely want the
celebrations to last for days as their rolling rhythms and yearning
vocals manage to effect the idea of great joy and sadness in about
equal measure.

They'd give you something to think
about in a glass half full/half empty kind of way . . . but all your
guests would be partying. Their song Seker Oglan is terrific.

And check out Neşe Alkan with the
Zafer Dilek Orchestra who possesses one of those voices which is
archetypal but also unique simultaneously.

These voices seem of the Appalling Now
but also beamed in from Great Days.

If the hip-hop samplers out there
aren't all over this collection (starting with Ali Ayhan right at the
end) then more fool them.

These days – aside from the political
shockwaves every news cycle – surprises don't come often, but this
collection will open ears. And a trove of music which is almost
bottomless.

“The original album cassettes from
Uzelli, however, have yet to be re-released,” says Kornelia Binicewicz -- the Polish DJ who researched and collated the compilation, and wrote the liner notes -- said in article in the Abu Dabi magazine The National.

“These albums are still undiscovered by contemporary audiences,
while there are many hidden or bonus tracks and can still be found on
sale at some old record stores, a musical window on a period of
social upheaval in Turkey’s history.”

Explore their catalogue here and be
sure to spend more than a few minutes on their cassette archive.

As Binicewicz says, “The design of
Uzelli cassette tapes also set them apart. It was
Armagan Konrat – a left-wing painter from Istanbul – who took
Uzelli to another level.

"His unique style of graphic design is a
great example of Turkish pop art from the late 1970s to the early
1980s.”

The past from a distant place has
seldom felt and looked so interesting, and alive.

For more on psychedelic music from everywhere at Elsewhere start here.

For the complete article by complier Kornelia Binicewicz in The National go here.

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